Zoning Out In The Zone

The notion of playing a zone offense was inspired, I confess, by our grand-daughter, The Kid's older sister, who recognizes no zone boundaries whatsoever.  She apparently has never considered that there is something she cannot do, if she chooses to.

Never, to anyone's knowledge, having sung before, she volunteered at age 9 to open her school's annual program with The Star-Spangled Banner.  The immensely patriotic Cuban-American audience shook the rafters at her conclusion.  Today, her dream is Broadway, and she sings, dances, acts and writes.  Everything from Willy Wonka to Shakespeare is fair game.  She also boxes, blogs, and challenges her teachers to challenge her.

She obviously doesn't know about coloring within the lines, or staying inside the box, or comfort zones.  And, she even inspired me to jump into another zone and audition for a musical.  (I didn't make it, but, hey, I got a callback.  And, going into another zone didn't hurt a bit.)

So, once again, I'm encouraging everyone to not overthink it, but to resist the urge to stay in (or retreat into) the comfort zone when there are new problems to solve and new challenges to meet.  Here's a quick boooster shot of reality: if you stay in your zone and things go wrong, youve got no place else to go.  It's too late, and you can't get out in time.  Admittedly things can go wrong when you leave the zone, but the human tendency is to over-imagine what might not go quite right and under-appreciate the good things that might develop by using new tools in new ways, or looking at the world around you from new perspectives.

Meanwhile, I do wonder (and occasionally worry) about how we are trained to stay within yesterday's boundaries, how we are neither encouraged nor recognized for moving into other zones, daring to think differently and be different.  When do we have our inborn curiosity surgically removed?  When and from whom do we learn fear of the unknown?  How do we forget the joy of discovery and accomplishment?